A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and systems for storing cell data, and, more particularly, to methods and systems for storing cell data using a bank of cell buffers.
B. Description of the Related Art
Many data networks pass data in the form of cells. The cells, which are of fixed size, pass through one or more switches on the way to a specified destination, which may be another switch, a terminal, or some other component in the network. An individual cell may need to be sent to several different destinations in the network from a single switch.
During a data cell read or write operation, the cell memory must be accessed multiple times. Typically, the memory must function at a rate that is a multiple of the cell arrival rate. For high speed data switches, this requires a very high speed memory. This performance requirement for the memory greatly limits the types of memory that can successfully perform the read and write operations in common switches of very high capacities. Generally, only small, fast memories are capable of meeting these requirements. This limits the capacity and increases the cost of the switch or restricts the speed of the data cells. While custom memories may be fabricated to meet these requirements, the cost of these are high. Therefore, it is desirable to provide a method and system for storing data cells capable of operating at high speeds, while using low cost memories.